@Nuclearslurpee I dont understand how you can say their alpha strike is strong outside of a jump point defence. Have you seen how drastically their damage drops off, to use them you HAVE to be faster than the enemy, you HAVE to be able to survive the entire distance closing from whatever your max range is to under about 20000km, and then when you do deploy your "alpha strike" youre still failing to out DPS nearly any other weapon in the game. It does not have alpha strike capability outside of a jump point defence. Not to mention what would happen if they offset their jump.
also if you think Carronade range is good youre insane. the one i described, 30cm C2, has theoretically 24 damage at point blank with a range of 240000km. which sounds good until you realise it fires once every 6 seconds and is doing 6 damage beyond 40000km, which is a quarter of its damage at quite literally a quarter of its range. Literally any other weapon can out dps it, and not to mention that you dont even have the fire control tech to use that long range at that level. The 12cm Laser is the same cost but half the tonnage, if you stack two it costs slightly more than a carronade but completely out competes it, it has better armour pen stats, it has better dps, it is more weapons capable of independent targetting. Its only at literally point blank range that the Carronade even comes close to breaking even, which i think is a bit ridiculous.
If you have that much of a concern about its use in buffing ground forces attack then we can argue about increasing its RP, but honestly the negatives even if it got its range flattened would still make the Laser or literally any other weapon system a much more desirable option.
Also i dont know how youd justify them being used as point defence. literally any other weapon, the least being a laser, outperform them in point defence and system defence roles. i dont know what system defence boats you have that are both fast enough to chase down enemy incursions AND armoured enough to survive to 20000km range.
I really fail to understand how you can even pretend Plasma is an effective niche weapon, and honestly it makes me suspect that you dont actually understand how their range scales or something.
30 cm C2 Plasma Carronade Range 80,000km TS: 2,012 km/s Power 24-2 RM 10,000 km ROF 60 24 12 8 6 4 4 3 3 0 0
this is with an 80000km fire control, at C2 and a 30cm carronade, Range bands are set to 10000km.
so at 10000km, it does 24, 20k km 12, 30kkm 8, 40kkm 6.
Meanwhile, a 12cm Visible light laser.
Single 12cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (1x1) Range 80,000km TS: 4000 km/s Power 4-2 RM 20,000 km ROF 10 4 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0
Keep in mind the laser fires literally 6 times as fast.
It out dpses the Carronade at literally any range, and takes half as much tonnage, and a 12cm visible light C2 laser is not a very hard thing to research.
You can fit two of these easily, and its not like youre going to go bankrupt doing so, and start to massively out dps a carronade.
There is literally no situation except against maybe maybe maybe against armoured fac's that a carronade would outperfom, and again only at literally point blank range. Its brute force armour pen at short range might give you an advantage, but beyond that it might as well not exist. And god forbid you need to close the range over distance.
The carronade would be a barely viable weapon system if it had a flat damage curve, 1 damage per 10000km. With the current damage drop off its near useless aside from being a tech to pad your ground forces weapons.
Also the only reason it even pretends to be a good STO is that the AI is dumb enough to come and sit perfectly in orbit of your planets. Not to mention the insane amount of fiddly micro it takes to hold fire carronade STO's if you have any large number of them to wait until the enemy gets into range. and that also assumes that the enemy doesnt wipe the formations on approach to the world where chances are theyre going to wildly outrange the carronades.
Please, if you disagree give me a detailed answer as to how Plasma is a viable weapon in any circumstance and dont just quote the same "its good for ground units and thats about it" stuff at me, ive been reading a literal ton of these comments and i respectfully disagree that this is all the weapon needs to be good. I dont like researching a weapon solely so i wont use it.
It sucks. And if you actually look at the stats etc, youll realise that it really does.